Practical approach, not dazzle, needed on mobile BI applications

Another citation on why integrated architecture is crucial in preserving investments made today around Mobile Business Intelligence.

Though, there were other aspects of the interview that did not make it in. Specifically, the user experience around use of interactive applications on today’s tablets and mobile devices has some ways to go to support day in day out interaction.

Things like the lag on the touchscreen is still in the order of 200 - 300 milliseconds which makes it difficult to consistently and repeatedly manipulate graphical objects / perspectives in an effective manner. Though the occasional use of Mint may be okay and fun once in while, when one is using a BI application to review and manipulate sales figures on an intra day basis, the lag becomes much more noticeable and annoying.

Also, current BI applications are geared as stand-alone apps - targeting executive leadership for the ‘dashboard’ type of reporting needs. For ongoing analytics and data that can be used for one’s day to day job (ergo, operations), enterprises still need to integrate those with their core applications. Though most of these have not been ported to mobile devices, once they do over the next few years, the true impact of having information at hand will be felt.

NFC still too "Fiddly and Geeky"?

This article is rather insightful in terms of the challenges that NFC faces in high traffic situations that one encounters in day to day life. 

Also, implicitly it highlights the impact of decisions (such as placement of the secure element) on the customer experience. Furthermore, the notion of TSM needs to be ironed out and the options whittled down to make the overall approach particle.

Based on the current perception, it would probably be fair to say that the initial estimate of ubiquitous acceptance in the next 2-3 years is more like 3-5. The caveat would be the emergence of a player (like Apple) that can standardize the current standards based proprietary extensions with one path forward. Ofcourse, as Apple has demonstrated it may resemble a closed system, though makes for a consistent experience and a modular way for the ecosystem to plug in to (once Apple gets its cut).

Interesting times indeed. 

Yet another tablet OS on the market... (HP's webOS 3.0)

HP’s tablet launch finally demonstrates the monetization of its webOS investment in a public manner. That is great given that Android and iOS are already battling it out and Microsoft is thinking of how to get Windows 8 to work in this segment (tablet PCs don’t count). And oh, let us not forget RIM’s Playbook though it is perhaps further behind in terms of gaining market share than all the others.

At this stage, it is fair to say that dominant players are Apple and Google though as the number of tablet (subset of mobile) OSes increases, it poses some challenges to organizations seeking to provide their customers a consistent and exemplary user experience regardless of the platform.

So how would a large organization support a rich user experience on all these mobile platforms through a combination of mobile applications and mobile web sites? Some quick thoughts come to mind:

  1. For content heavy interactions, such as informational / marketing content (e.g. product information), it is probably safe to use a mobile platform development tool, which then ports (aka ‘compiles’) to a platform specific binary. Though Adobe’s flash has gotten a bad rap in some areas, with Flash and Flex Builder, one can support multiple apps with fair ease. It also helps that their products tend to be prevalent in creative circles who tend to author such apps.
  2. For content or applications requiring timely update, perhaps the best approach is to support HTML5 with appropriate JavaScript libraries to provide for a mostly consistent experience. Given the nascent state of mobile web browsers, it would not be surprising to expect a fair amount of custom platform specific scripting especially for pages supporting business transactions. A good illustration of the nuances is captured in this blog entry by a mobile application developer.
  3. For business productivity applications (e.g., supporting field personnel or employees), though mobile application development suites (such as PhoneGap) can provide a level of standardization across the platforms, there is no panacea which provides for ‘write once, use anywhere’. Just as Java struggled with supporting native capabilities spanning the platforms, organizations should plan ahead to make sure that the appropriate capabilities are tuned to the platform specific nuances such as UI, app integrity validation and payment integration.

For the time being for complex applications, organizations would need to support two platforms natively, with more generic capabilities being managed through application suite rendered run-times or by embedded HTML5 code. 

Until the emergence of more consistent HTML5 support, the adoption curve by developers for new entrants (such as Windows 8 and webOS) is going to be pretty challenging. This will limit adoption in the corporate arena along the peripheral edges where timely access to rich content is a high priority and limited transactional support is needed.

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